Karma reasons for concrete message

Message

Even the term "Christ-like" as a definition leaves a lot of room for interpretation. How does each person describe Christ? And what of the person who defines Christ-like as "being perfect?" Now there aren't any Christians. And how do we define "evil" or "wrong?" Is lying evil? Is losing your temper wrong? Do either of those disqualify a person as a Christian? And if not, where is the line at which an act isn't evil/wrong enough to count?

This is exactly the problem. It's an absolute fact that Jesus, as a character in the bible, is nowhere near the perfect being that Christians tout him to be. When you actually read some of the things he did and said, none of the good stuff (and I will admit, there are some good things) is original, and some of the stuff is down-right awful. So what's happened over the centuries is that the idea of the perfection of Jesus has been passed down from generation to generation, and the legend of his perfection has grown to such heights as to make people say things like 'I think you can tell a Christian because they're 'Christlike', even though, if you really look at the sum total of what he did, said, and the way he acted, he wasn't anywhere near perfect.

What it boils down to is that Christianity isn't about loving Jesus. It's about loving the ideal that they've personified in that particular character and Jesus is just the name they've put to the ideal. And since each of us determines 'perfection' in our own ways, when someone talks about being 'Christlike', what they actually mean is to be as perfect as humanly possible, as demonstrated through their own definition of perfection. To me, that is why so many people can say they are being 'Christlike' when to others, they're just being ass holes. Because their definition of what is 'Christlike' is just another word for 'perfect as far as I'm concerned'. Each of us has a different version of perfection.

No I don't think so. If someone deceives you into thinking they are Christian and then does evil things then this will affect how you treat others that say they are Christians.

I actually tend to agree with this somewhat when it comes to Christianity, but it is a problem that Christianity has created for itself from the moment it planted it's dirty little flag in the center of morality and claimed that all things Christian are 'good'. If Christians never tried to claim that religion is the epitome of good, and that belief in God is the ultimate 'good', then you wouldn't be saddled with your problem anymore because nobody would be holding you to it.

What Christianity has done is analogous to a car company claiming that every single car they produce is better than any other car in the world, and then having half the cars they turn out be piles of shit. If you didn't claim it was the best car in the world, you wouldn't have to deal with as big a backlash when people realized that your cars suck ass. In much the same respect; if a certain group of people (lets call them the 'math superstars') claimed they were the best in the world at math, and then they did evil things, you wouldn't stop thinking they're good at math. But if they can't do geometry, then every incorrect math problem might make you think every member of the 'math superstars' isn't all that good at math.

Evil acts by Christians make all Christians look bad, but only because Christianity has purposefully made itself synonymous with good. It's not, though. Being Christian doesn't make people good; and worse yet, Christianity itself can even make people into ass holes. Therein lies the problem.